Getting Down To Business

In this week’s digital edition of Canadian Travel Press, the theme seems to be all about opportunities that are out there just waiting for travel agents to take advantage of.

Selling affluent travellers trips to the Cayman Islands. Making sure that customers actually take advantage of the holiday time they have and go on vacation.

And for the travel management companies out there, it’s all about the opportunities that will present themselves as a result of a new partnership between Air Canada and Concur.

Affluent opportunities

It’s time to start living the good life in the Cayman Islands. For the past five years, the Cayman Island Department of Tourism has been re-tooling its marketing approach, re-defining its brand position and the pay-off has been 3 years of record growth. Find out about how the Cayman Islands are making waves in the affluent travel market space and in doing so, helping agents earn more money. For the full story in this week’s digital edition of Canadian Travel Press, click here.

Down To Business

Air Canada has teamed up with Bellevue, Washington-headquartered Concur in a partnership that will see the two companies put together a corporate travel booking solutions functionality for aircanada.com and Air Canada apps.

It’s a development that’s been long awaited, with AC’s manager of distribution business development, Keith Wallis telling CTP that while Air Canada could have put its corporate negotiated rates onto its web site years ago if it had wanted to, it didn’t do that because it realized that “would just have created huge upheaval in the managed corporate space.”

“So without knowing it,” Wallis said, “we were almost waiting for TripLink to be invented and so now that we have this ability to confidently say to our corporate customers and to our travel management company partners that you can book on aircanada.com with confidence and that data will flow out into the rest of the ecosystem that you rely on, now we’re investing in aircanada.com and you’ll have the aircanada.com corporate portal that you can get to from aircanada.com.”

This week’s digital edition of Canadian Travel Press has the full story on AC’s new initiative with Concur, so just click here.

Don’t deprive them

While one might think today’s technological advances may lead to less stress and allow for more vacation time, reports assistant editor, Greg Coates, the opposite could actually be true with those on the road – or on a staycation – too easily connected to their workplace.

Some proof of this can found in a recent national survey by Expedia.ca, which reveals Canadians reporting an increase in vacation deprivation – despite feeling that vacations are hugely important to their overall well-being.

The survey shows that vacations are viewed by Canadians as medicine for the body, mind and soul, with 93% of respondents saying they feel relaxed and rejuvenated when they get home from a vacation.

Eighty-seven per cent say they feel closer to their partners or their family and 78% report being more focused at work after a vacation.

Click here for the full story in this week’s digital edition of Canadian Travel Press.